


the last time you'll say no

by dragon_rider



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:34:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2313023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragon_rider/pseuds/dragon_rider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Let’s have dinner,” Q says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the last time you'll say no

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to [Sarah_Ellie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Sarah_Ellie/pseuds/Sarah_Ellie) whose mad beta skills are possibly the only reason this doesn't suck.
> 
> I'm not a native speaker so any mistakes left are my own.
> 
> Title taken from [My heart is open](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDbzfEHqEZo) by Maroon 5.

Rejecting Q opens an old wound that never healed completely, a wound that oozed and bled whenever he dared to believe that he were whole again.

His heart doesn’t shatter. It’s a muscle, not a piece of glass, after all. But like in poetry, Bond could swear that it stops beating for a moment, busy shrinking within itself in the hopes the pain would shrink with it as well.

It’s while he’s turning on his heels and refusing to look back that he notices it.

He’s made too good of a job at avoiding introspection either dodging bullets or crawling to the bottom of a bottle to keep himself from looking too closely at things he’d do better not acknowledging.

He’s in love with Q. He doesn’t know the Quartermaster’s name, his beliefs, his drive. He doesn’t even know the things that are in plain sight for him to see because even the color of Q’s eyes is a mystery. They’re mostly green at times, mostly grey at others, sometimes they’re the color of rich, old wood that should belong in an exquisite antique instead of the face of a man that hasn’t even reached his thirties, but most of all they’re complex in a way that fascinates him. The quirks of his lips aren’t as intricate but they would require hours of study that Bond had never had around the clever and enigmatic Quartermaster.

He’s in love with his voice, with his wit, with the way he takes a sip of Earl Grey from his mug and smirks as if he were planning mass destruction when he’s most likely preventing it; with the way those atrocities he calls cardigans hug his waist, with every little thing he knows about him.

He’s in love with Q but rejecting him as he’s learning this wish to love everything he doesn’t know about his Quartermaster too.

Funny, that.

***

It doesn’t start like this, but this is the breaking point:

“Let’s have dinner,” Q says.

Bond has just made it back from Quito; successful and generally unscathed.

He’s even managed to bring half his Q-branch issued kit back and for a moment, he thinks this is the odd way his Quartermaster plans on reinforcing this positive behavior.

“Now, Q,” he grins, hip leaning on Q’s desk, teasing, “I didn’t think you were that easy. I lost my Walther and that precious prototype you gave me too. You can’t possibly be thinking of rewarding me for that.”

Q chuckles and his laugh is a melody Bond wants to hear again. They’re alone in the office Q barely uses and if he’s getting mock-hit on, he’s going to up the ante and flirt right back.

Q stands, his glasses losing the bright hue that impeded Bond from seeing his eyes, and that’s when his stomach drops, when he understands this isn’t a joke. They’re playful and lively but determined and sincere. Bond would know because reading people is what he does for a living; killing is just what he has to do once he’s discovered—or buried—what Queen and country needed him to.

“You won’t have dessert,” Q declares, taking two steps towards him and stopping with a hand on the side of his desk, tilting his head to the side. There’s grace in his voice as there is in every line his slender body draws when it moves, as there always is, but having it directed and honed specifically for him leaves Bond breathless, “You will only have two glasses of whatever drink you choose for the night and we won’t go to one of those fancy restaurants you love, either. Would that suffice as proper punishment, Bond?”

He tenses, stands almost at parade rest, and lets Q see the change in his body language. It’s deliberate and it does what he expects it to do; Q stiffens too, his thin frame going from confident and relaxed to ramrod straight and anxious. He even straightens his glasses even though there’s no need; it’s a nervous tick Bond has seldom seen him do in the three years they’ve worked together.

“It’s a bad idea,” he states.

“Going to a regular restaurant in one of your bespoke suits? Well, yes,” Q sidesteps, “I was hoping you’d own a pair of jeans like the rest of us mortals.”

“You and I,” Bond clarifies even though he knows Q is anything but thick, “It’s a bad idea, Q, we can’t—“

“Bond,” Q interjects, sweet and patient, as if he’s lecturing a child instead of trying to convince someone who’s fifteen years his senior to go out with him, “Bad ideas are where all the fun and great concepts come from. You can’t let that deter you.”

Bond wishes he didn’t see the rest of what Q means shining bright in his eyes, those enigmatic and beautiful eyes fixed on him with half challenge and half blind hope in them.

 _We could be great_ , his eyes say, _I know you feel it too._

“Q,” Bond breathes out, dazed. Funny, he thinks, how much more terrified he is completely safe in this office with a scrawny boy than he is in the field with death chasing him at every corner, “You know everything about me. I don’t even know your name.”

Q smiles both in invitation and promise.

Every instinct in Bond is urging him to agree, to hold the back of Q’s long and gorgeous neck and kiss him until he can no longer string two clever sentences together.

He’s used to having instinct as an advantage, as another tool in his store; but he saves it this time, ignores it with everything he has in him.

 _You will not break him_ , he thinks, _therefore you will not even touch him._

“I’m afraid that’s information that can only be disclosed after the third date, Mister Bond,” Q teases, “As to how much I know you, I know your file by memory and I know your agent persona better than most, but I don’t presume to know you and I’d like to rectify that. So let’s have dinner.”

Life has taught him to be ruthless from a very young age. It makes his job easier. He’s never hesitated in doing what he must and if he does now, it’s too brief for Q to notice. Computers are his area of expertise, after all, and people are Bond’s.

“I can’t give you what you want, Q,” at this, Q bristles, so he makes a point of staring at the flatness of his chest and adds, cool, “And you can’t give me what I want. It is, as I said, a bad idea.”

It’s no secret that he’s bedded men before. Marks, informants, gender has never made a difference to him. Q lives in his ear in missions and he’s aware of this but if he really knows his file by memory he must know that the only time he fell for someone it was a mistake.

Vesper.

“I—I thought,” Q stutters. That is a first but yes, he knows, “Forgive me, 007. I overstepped, assumed—it won’t happen again. Thank you for returning the equipment. If you manage to bring back more than half my tech next time, that would be lovely.”

“So greedy,” Bond quips without missing a beat because he can’t, “There’s nothing to forgive, Q. Nothing happened.”

“Right,” Q says, awkward and back at his computer, his profile a tense line all the way down to his back.

Bond tips his head in farewell and pretends not to hear the uneven breath Q lets out as soon as he thinks he’s out of hearing range.

Q might look like a boy but he’s a man, a branch head of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and Bond will not believe a man like him is enough to make Q—brilliant, intriguing, lovely Q—crumble.

***

It’s Q’s first time in the field. They’re in Dubai and their covers are hardly disguises at all; Q’s an avaricious scientist and Bond’s his bodyguard. It makes it easier to play, indeed, but the truth so close to the surface keeps him on edge.

Bond’s been told in precise, clipped words by Mallory that if everything goes pear-shaped he is to whisk MI6’s major asset—their Quartermaster—back to safety at all costs and sod the mission.

Q is here to find out as much as he can about Russia’s latest attempt at developing nuclear energy. He’s posing as an experimental physicist and after three days in a row of witnessing how he discusses and casually improves a thing in their design here and another there while talking with their mark, Bond determines his cover is less of a cover and more of a secondary PhD.

Their mark is incredibly impressed and sharing more details about his project by the minute.

Bond is astonished and possibly in love.

“I was bored one summer,” Q explains, tapping away at his laptop as he does every waking moment they’re in their connecting rooms.

Bond stares. “People watch movies when they’re bored, Q.”

Q looks over the rim of his glasses, unimpressed. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

***

It is quite obvious the mark is not just interested in Q’s cover identity. It’s been obvious from the first moment he laid eyes on Q and Bond discards the vicious pang he feels at that as apprehension. Q is his charge and this particular development could endanger him, after all.

He is still ill prepared to find Q inspecting his reflection in front of a mirror in his room. He’s wearing Bond’s favorite suit he’s brought for the mission; a dark green one that brings out both the color of his eyes and the contrast between his pale skin and dark hair.

It is also quite obvious that Q will not be having dinner in his room tonight so Bond’s usual question before calling for room service is unnecessary.

“You’re spending the night with him,” he says, jaw clenched and hands firmly tucked in his pockets.

Bond is purposefully vague with his description and they both know it. That Q is planning to sleep with Vetrov brings a tart taste to his mouth and he wonders if he’d be able to stomach it, letting the young man out of his sight only to lose him later.

He stands beside Q and stares, disapproval clear in every line of his body and the icy hue of his eyes.

“I thought you’d approve, 007,” Q states, straightening the collar of his dress shirt, “He will trust me faster and more completely this way.”

“You could be in danger,” Bond tries disapproving louder, since Q is trying so hard not to see it.

“I am in danger,” Q counters, “I have been in danger ever since we arrived here, 007, and I will do what I must to guarantee we complete the mission. I’d rather not die, of course, so rest assured that if I weren’t absolutely sure of Vetrov’s intentions towards me, I would not go.”

Q turns and looks at him then, cutting any further objections Bond may have on the matter.

His serenity in the face of such peril and the straightforward way in which he’s deemed this as the best course of action for the mission astound him.

“You have your orders and I have mine,” Q reminds him, “If I need you, you will know.”

He taps the side of the glasses he’s brought to the field, a much more becoming pair than the thick ones he uses back in England, and instantly Bond’s mobile buzzes in his pocket.

The screen is showing a distress signal from Q along with his location when he takes it out.

Q, the imp, is smirking at him.

“Do you approve now?”

Bond nods curtly, impressed in spite of himself, and promptly goes back to his own room.

***

Q is back at 0300 and opens the door connecting their rooms, looking the picture of a man who’s been in the receiving end of a good shag.

“I have what we need,” he informs him, “You may proceed, 007.”

Afterward, when Bond is back from killing a mark whose last hours on this Earth were beside Q, he expects discomfort but can’t find it anywhere in Q.

Perhaps Vetrov’s morals were twisted enough for Q not to feel guilty about it. Perhaps Bond hasn’t been able to learn how to read him right yet.

Q’s tells are subtle, practically non-existent, and that reminds him of Vesper.

***

Q is his superior and in an ideal world, they would always be on the same side, but the world is anything but ideal and Bond has been gullible before and paid the price dearly.

In the close quarters of their flight back home, he studies the boy who against all odds decided to trust him without knowing him at all when they first met.

Bond cannot afford that same trust, not even after years of working with him.

“I hope this doesn’t come as a disappointment, 007,” Q says after a while, unflustered, his profile outlined by sunlight coming through the window, “But the world does not revolve around you.”

From anyone else, it would be condescending. As smug as Q can be sometimes, he’s not in that moment. The soft, soft way in which he looks at Bond when he pauses prevents him from reacting badly.

“You don’t determine their fate,” Q declares, “Whoever comes across you in the field and dies shortly afterward either knew too much or was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Guilt is quite a heavy burden and will not help you with stealth or with your reputation of a cold-blooded murderer, I’m afraid. You’d do better without.”

It’s chilling, the fact that despite his best efforts Q somehow managed to look right through him.

“How—“

Q smiles slightly. “Lucky guess.”

From anyone else, it would be pity, but he can only read understanding in Q. The sadness in his eyes is too open to be anything but that.

“Doing everything by the book, improvising, making mistakes, amending them—it all could end in one possible outcome, wouldn’t you say? And how would you explain that if it weren’t completely beyond us? People die, 007, but unless we mean to kill them, it’s not our fault.”

Q is talking about M in what is simultaneously the most direct and indirect way Bond has heard.

He sees the hunch in his shoulders, the slight bend in his spine and knows that Q has spent the last two years crushed under the weight of guilt.

He’s been lonely, but not alone.

He smiles.

“Drink, Q?”

“Please.”

***

 _Performed admirably_ , says the report Bond hacked into in Mallory’s office about Dubai and his own role in the mission.

He reads it in Q’s dulcet tones, the ones that can turn technological prattle to almost poetry.

He also finds a request submitted by Q about field work, asking for 007 were he needed out of Q-branch again.

It’s not exactly a shock—his job is the one thing he excels at. He is, even with younger 00’s currently in service, unparalleled in his success rate and aptitude.

He’s grown a long way from blowing up embassies because they were in his way. It’s gratifying that Q—cool, proficient, Q of all people—can see that.

Eve grins at him on his way out.

He freezes. She isn’t supposed to be there but in a board meeting with Mallory and Tanner two stories up.

“Q called me in,” she tells him lightly, “He says next time you could just ask.”

***

The next time they’re in the field together, Bond discovers Q is an excellent—exquisite, truly—shot.

He’s on his way to tell Q they need to go _now_ and throw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes if he must to get him out in time when he catches the slender man drawing two guns from hidden holsters in his boots and shooting two Security guards right in the center of the head.

Bond stares. Q smirks and quickly packs his equipment after just a slight cock of the head from him.

“Good timing, 007. I’ve just finished.”

Bond wonders, stiffly, if this is the first time Q has killed. His movements are steady and his gaze doesn’t linger in the bodies but adrenaline is a powerful thing. Perhaps he simply hasn’t run out of it yet.

He hopes Q doesn’t need any comfort. He doesn’t know how to give it; not anymore, not truthfully, and Q deserves the real thing, not a charade he can pull out because it’s what is required for the mission.

Q doesn’t break, not even when they’re safe on their way back, and Bond allows himself to relax, if only just.

“I was impressed, too,” Q says, a quirk in his lips that’s almost playful, “You’re quite the skilled hacker, 007.”

Bond’s smile in return is nearly predatory.

Q sighs. “Please don’t let it go to your head.”

“Never.”

***

Q could’ve been perfect for him but—and here lays the issue—he could never have been perfect for him, no matter how much he tried.

No matter how much he drinks in his ever-empty flat he still dreams with Q saying _let’s have dinner_ in his ear.

In his dreams, he says yes.

In his dreams, he’s not too broken or too old and doesn’t curse every person he comes to care for.

***

Intellectually, he knows Q’s injuries are minor; a few abrasions on his face, a cut above his right eyebrow, a flesh wound from a passing bullet in his left arm. He also knows the mission that required him to be abroad with another 00 while Bond was engaged in Morocco was both of the utmost importance and time-sensitive.

Still, as he watches a nurse stitching Q up while the young man barely cringes despite looking younger and frailer than ever, Bond feels vindictive and rightful in his fury.

Q could have died and he hadn’t been there to protect him.

Bond comes into the room in Medical with the airs of a man who’s been affronted; a single thought in the forefront of his mind.

“I expected more from you,” he seethes, “The Quartermaster of MI6 is supposed to be levelheaded. It’s in the bloody job description, Q. But you threw all that to Hell when you chose 008!”

Q doesn’t react at first. He sits up slowly and groggily; uncharacteristically clumsy fingers reaching for his glasses on the side table.

Hurt gives Q’s eyes the focus that they lacked in his exhaustion.

Bond knows before a word is uttered that he’s made a mistake.

“I chose?” Q speaks, cold incredulity dripping from his voice, “I _chose_? You think I orchestrated everything so you weren’t in London, you think that I made sure that daft arms dealer decided to move his operation to Ukraine and jeopardize years of intel gathering unless we acted within a week’s time frame?”

“You think I did all that only so I wouldn’t have to deal with working close to you after my little miscalculation? Why, Bond, I didn’t know you thought so _highly_ of me. I may be the best at what I do but I’m not omnipotent. I can’t move people as if they were chess pieces. I appreciate the vote of confidence; I always did wonder what your opinion of me was. This clears it up quite thoroughly.”

“Q—“

“You’re dismissed, 007. You need to be debriefed and checked out by Medical; none of which are of my concern.”

Q lies back down in the bed and gives Bond his back. That he’s done discussing this is blatant. Bond is anything but done but every word he could utter is better left unsaid.

***

He doesn’t need to hack into the internal servers again to know that Q’s special request is gone; vanished as if it’d never existed.

He does it all the same. He also reads the report from Kiev and the detached way in which Q describes the events chills him to the bone.

There are hardly any differences between the way Q refers to his performance and 008’s and that—oh, that is unsettling, is it not? That there are no traces of him having a privileged place in Q’s heart and he wants to find something, anything that can remind him of Q’s feelings for him; of the gentle intentions he had to ruin in order to not ruin Q.

He hurls the flat screen off the desk. It lands with an unsatisfying clatter on the floor of Mallory’s office and breaks in pieces that maybe not even Q will be able to put back together.

He leaves with no explanation.

No one asks him for one.

***

Bond knows that passion— _love_ , he doesn’t want to admit—strips him of everything that’s valuable in him; his logical judgment, his battle instinct, his single-minded focus to do what he must and nothing more. It’s the way it happened with Vesper and it’s the way he didn’t let it happen with Q until now. It’s the way it wouldn’t be with Q, were Bond brave enough to accept him; to allow Q to be beside him as they serve their country in the way each of them is skilled at.

What he didn’t know until now is that there would be nothing but regret to keep him company if Q dies before him and Bond never took him out on a date and discovered if the precise and elegant way in which the young man moves applied to dancing, to kissing, to making love as well.

Love has made him blind before.

Love has wrecked him before but Q has never failed him.

Bond already loves him, the last leap he needs to take is to trust.

***

A part of him wants his mistake to be permanent and incorrigible. It’s the part of him that finds comfort in the cold and solitude, the part that wishes for his one true love to be the race with death that he’s bound to lose sooner or later.

The rest of him is faring better. It’s exhilarating; hanging by a thread and about to fall but willing to let go as long as Q joins him. He can almost taste youth and tentative joy on his tongue.

Whatever the outcome, he’s a new man now. He’s still broken, still troubled, but not hopeless, not anymore.

He owes that to Q.

***

He arrives to Q’s flat with his finest suit and a single red rose in his hand.

He gets an immediate surprise in the form of Q’s security system.

“Special agent 007,” it chirps mechanically at him from somewhere up his right after scanning his retina, “Welcome.”

The door leads to a set of stairs. Q is at the top, wearing checkered pyjamas and a robe big enough to drown his slim frame in it.

His posture is screaming casual too loudly to be genuine. It makes Bond ache.

“There is no need for you to grovel, 007,” Q says coldly, “We will keep working together unless you ask for another handler. Should you desire, R is more than capable of—“

Bond shakes his head minutely, takes just one step up and stops. “I was the one who was out of place, Q. I was the one who was unprofessional, not you. I was mad—“

Q scoffs. “That much I gathered. To the point, if you please, Bond.”

“I wanted to be there with you,” he admits, “If anything happened to you, I—Q, it would drive me insane.”

Q’s brow furrows. Behind his glasses, his eyes glisten, his whole body gravitating closer to where Bond is standing. He licks his pink, pink lips and gulps, his adam’s apple giving a rickety jump in his long neck.

“If you’re mocking me, Bond,” Q threatens, “I will make your life Hell.”

Bond covers the stairs three at a time and stops two steps from reaching Q. “If you’re quite recovered, I’d like to take you out to dinner.”

He offers the rose almost as an afterthought. Q smiles at seeing it; a coy and pretty thing that Bond wants to see again.

“I’d rather stay and order in,” Q says, taking the flower with one hand and reaching out to him with the other, “Would you be amenable to that?”

They’re almost of a height so leaning his forehead against Q’s comes both easy and natural.

This time, he’s ready.

“Yes.”


End file.
